Child Shot to Death in Gang Confrontation : Echo Park: Police say the 2-year-old girl was riding with a group of women, including her mother, after one slashed tires on a car apparently belonging to armed youths.

A 2-year-old girl died Saturday after being shot in the forehead during what police say was a gang showdown between a carload of women, including her mother, and a group of armed men in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Doctors at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles were unable to save dark-haired, dark-eyed Bianca Hernandez, described by relatives as a budding dancer and an avid fan of Barney the Dinosaur. The girl was the only person hit in the Friday night shooting. No arrests have been made.

The child’s maternal grandmother, Kathie Mationg, wept in the hospital lobby Saturday morning. “I don’t understand it,” she said. “I just know my granddaughter is gone and there’s no reason why she had to.”

Detectives said the child’s parents--Michele Mationg and Victor Hernandez, both 19--associate with gang members. Kathie Mationg denied the assertions as she held the couple’s other child, 1-year-old Victor Jr., on her lap.

At the LAPD’s Rampart Division, Detective Bob Lopez said the trouble appears to have started with a tire slashing.

Details remain sketchy, but he said Michele Mationg was driving a car carrying her daughter and four other women and girls, ages 12 to 30. They stopped at Santa Ynez and Bonnie Brae streets just west of Echo Park Lake about 10:30 p.m. Friday. One passenger hopped out and slashed the rear tires of a parked car that apparently belonged to a rival gang, Lopez said.

Suddenly, a group of young men from the rival gang approached on foot and began shooting as the car screeched away. “There were quite a few shots,” Lopez said, perhaps 20.

The car, which is in police custody, was hit at least twice--including once by the bullet that pierced the rear window, killing the child as she peered out.

There may have been up to 15 members of the rival gang at the scene as Mationg drove away, police said. There were no solid identifications of the assailants Saturday, and Lopez said that “leads are starting to dry up.”

Police Sgt. John Vanelli said it will be up to the district attorney’s office to decide if Bianca’s mother or the other women in the car should be charged with child endangerment or other crimes. The sergeant said the case appears to reflect a trend of teen-age girls and young women who are drawn into the epicenter of gang violence.

“It’s getting to the point where they are just not supporting and helping the gangs but they are being part of it,” Vanelli said. “The tragic thing is they are the ones who are dragging the kids along. That’s what upsets me most of all. They could have left the kid with a relative, with a friend, or sat her here at our front door.”

The dead child’s parents returned Saturday afternoon from the hospital into the arms of waiting relatives at their Silver Lake home, a well-maintained compound of a duplex with an older rear bungalow. The parents, obviously distraught, declined to be interviewed.

A cousin, Lawrence Tapia, said that the police account was “bogus and distorted” and that Michele Mationg was only giving a friend a ride home Friday night.

“It’s unreal,” Tapia said of the toddler’s death. “She was such a beautiful girl. She was just starting to learn to say my name.”

Relatives recalled the child’s second birthday party, a happy gathering two months ago at which Bianca again showed how well she danced. “She loved to dance, she loved to dance,” her maternal grandmother said. The little girl treasured the troll dolls and stuffed Barneys she received as gifts.

At the scene of the shooting less than a mile away, the intersection was dotted by chalk circles that investigators had drawn around bullet casings.

“It’s getting bad here,” said Mary Telma, 37, a housekeeper who lives nearby with her husband, a mechanic, and their sons, ages 15 and 9. “I’m afraid to let my sons outside.”

Another neighbor, a man in his 30s who asked not to be identified, lamented a lack of police presence. “Without extra police, there’s not much anyone can do. That’s the scary part,” he said.

After the shooting, Michele Mationg apparently drove home and sped the child to an urgent care clinic in the neighborhood, authorities said. Bianca was transferred to Childrens Hospital, where she was placed on life support systems through the night, hospital spokesman Tim Bradley said.

However, several tests quickly showed that she was brain-dead from the wound in the middle of her forehead, and her death was “a foregone conclusion,” Bradley said. The child was pronounced dead Saturday morning and removed from a ventilator after her parents bade her a bedside goodby.

Outside the hospital, two young men who said they belong to the Temple Street gang and are friends of the child’s parents, predicted that her death would set off a round of retribution. “Once this starts going, it’s going to be hard for them to hide,” said one teen-ager, who identified himself as Angel Fabian, 17.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, in whose district the shooting took place, called the girl’s death “a terrible tragedy.”

The Echo Park area has had gang troubles for many years, Goldberg said. “A lot of the gang stuff is made worse by the extraordinary availability of guns of all types and sizes. Part of the tragedy is that we are not doing anything to keep these weapons and ammunition out of the hands of these people.”